American Institute for Steel Recycling - Steel Competition 2009

Dissolving the barrier between man and junk

Partner : Vanui Nazarian

Sun Valley, California is home to a very industrial area with very little to no green space in its proximity. This becomes an incredible problem with heat and flooding. Due to no green space, Sun Valley is a major city that is prone to floods that become very hazardous to its citizens. Pick Your Parts Junkyard is intensely populated with cars and steel. It houses cars for steel recycling. But is that all that a huge lot of cars can offer?
Pick Your Parts Junkyard becomes an excellent candidate in introducing new program to an existing program that do not necessarily go hand in hand. The Proposal is to introduce a facility that not only will obtain public programs but also better the workers of the junkyard. The introduced program acts as the barrier from the pedestrians to the workers of the junkyard which allows both to be engaged with one anothers presences but also does not conflict with the working areas.
In Sun Valley, Pick Your Parts Junkyard is currently seen by many as uninhabitable, dry, and dangerous - a graveyard of cars. But what is currently not understood is that the decomposition of the car is not only a spectacle that marks the end of its life but also dissects it, revealing its steel organs that will soon begin their rebirth. As an organization of scientists, the steel research facility hovers above each important process of this integration, studing it and supervising it. As the car decomposes, the steel research facility also goes through a transformation. The study becomes more whole and the building begins to enclose.